Chapter Twenty-Four Frankie #3
Benjamin gritted his teeth, made a fist, and raised his arm as if to strike Luther.
“Luther,” Uncle Thomas said, stepping between the two men. “That’s a great deal of supposition, and I find it highly unlikely that—”
“They’re roaming the town like a pack of mad dogs,” Luther said, getting strident now. “Demons haunting the woods.”
“It’s my wife you’re talking about,” Benjamin said, stepping forward, arm down but hand still clenched.
“Is she?” Luther was getting louder. “Is she still? Or is she something else? Has she too risen from the dead? Does her heart still beat in her chest or is something else propelling her on?”
“Enough, Luther!” Uncle Thomas’s voice was raised now.
Without a word, Benjamin moved to the thick woods at the eastern edge of the property, and started down a small path there.
He moved somewhat drunkenly, his steps unsure.
The jumbled tracks did seem to head that way, so we followed him.
The dog came along, nudging at my hand. From time to time I stopped to give her reassuring scratches behind the ears.
“Out of biscuits, I’m afraid.” The dog followed anyway.
We walked for forty minutes or so, following the tracks down the snow-covered path. It was well used, the branches cut back. The temperature was finally warming, the sun breaking through the clouds.
The path, and the tracks following it, led to the back side of the factory, eerily silent with all the men out searching.
I realized that the morning bell had not rung.
The whole town marked the passage of time by the factory bells that tolled out three times a day Monday through Friday, and the church bell that rang each Sunday at ten.
The bare footprints in the snow went back down Main Street, but were soon lost, muddied and stepped on by others.
We followed them as best we could back through town and to the little road that we’d already followed up the hill to the knackerman’s place.
Discouraged, we doubled back to the pub.
As we made our way back through town, I noticed plates of food and bottles of ale and rum left out on the front steps of several homes. Some plates even held coins.
“What is all this?” I asked.
“They’re for the knackerman,” Luther explained. “Seems some folks are thinking that if they leave him something, he won’t bother their family. Won’t bewitch any of them.”
My uncle’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing.
We were met outside the pub by the group of men led by Michael Knapp. Reverend Davies was with him, along with Bert Osbourne and a dozen or so men who worked at the clothespin factory.
“Any sign?” asked Michael.
“He’s been up at his place recently,” Uncle Thomas said. “Emile and Mrs. Stoddard too, it seems. No one is there now, though. We followed the tracks back down the hill.”
“They’re going in circles,” Benjamin added, exasperated.
“But why?” asked Michael. “What does it mean? What are they doing?”
“Trying to trick us,” Luther spat. “To tire us out so we’ll be weak when they attack.”
“Attack?” Uncle Thomas said.
“Always knew something wasn’t right about the man,” Michael said.
Bert nodded. “My Jimmy, he swears he saw him high up in a tree once, too high a place for a man to climb, up there at the top, swaying in the moonlight.”
“And wasn’t it just after he sharpened Mrs. Prigget’s knives that she and her daughters took ill in July?” Michael said.
Uncle Thomas interjected, “The Prigget household had a simple, though severe, case of summer diarrhea, and all four recovered with rest and—”
The men ignored him.
“And Old Man Dunn’s crops failed right after the knackerman shod his horses, isn’t that right?
” Lester Styles spoke up from the crowd.
He was a burly, bearded man who worked as a logger in the winters.
He’d lost his wife and baby daughter to the flu, and my uncle and I had spent hours in his home, trying to save them.
“My wife, she used to bake him pies. Felt sorry for him.” He spat in the snow.
The dog paced nervously, watching each of us, wondering what we might do next.
“The devil is a trickster—he wears many faces,” Luther said, looking up at the hills surrounding town, the acres of forest.
Was it my imagination, or was Benjamin watching me warily? Reverend Davies, too.
How easy would it be, I wondered, for them to declare me a devil too? Certainly, if word got out about Pearl and me, they’d say I had the devil in me and had managed to possess poor, innocent Pearl as well.
I imagined myself running through the trees, being hunted by men I’d known my whole life, the grown boys I’d once played with in those same woods, battling invisible enemies with stick guns and swords.
“Luther, may I remind you—” Uncle Thomas began, but he was cut off by Reverend Davies.
“And Jesus asked, ‘What is your name?’ and the man replied, ‘I am legion, for we are many.’ ”
A shiver seemed to go through the small crowd of men. Murmuring. Someone said a prayer.
“God save us,” Michael Knapp said. “The devil has come to Boone’s Ferry.”